Great British Baking Show Mandoline

The Great British Baking Show finger tip remover mandoline is the MasterClass Stainless Steel Mandoline (Amazon - UK). This is basically a mandoline with interchangeable blades and a protective slide, it enables the bakers to quickly uniformly slice things.

The MasterClass Stainless Steel Mandoline (Amazon - UK) comes with 7 interchangeable blades. These allow you to change the slice profile from flat wafers, to ridged wafers, to strips, to shreds. This allows the bakers to quickly produce a uniform slice profile of what ever they run through it quickly without needing to meticulously slice things. Additionally, the mandoline's platform is adjustable. This allows the bakers to adjust the thickness of the slices, anywhere from wafer thin to fairly chunky.

The mandoline also comes with a protective slide. What ever is being sliced can be placed in the slide, then the slides cover allows you to apply pressure while cutting. This is a great addition in my opinion as anyone who's played with a mandoline or grater as a child has lost a finger tip... "I'm going so fast! Oh... I'm bleeding so much!" Just a side note here - if you're using a normal mandoline, get some protective cut resistant gloves (they're machine washable!), especially if you're having children help you out. Please - for the children...'s fingers... sake.

The whole MasterClass Stainless Steel Mandoline (Amazon - UK) is stainless steel. This is nice both from washing, care, and longevity perspectives. On top of that MasterClass has a 5 year warranty for the mandoline.

At this point I think we can basically say that MasterClass is the replacement for KitchenCraft gear. MasterClass is owned by the same company as KitchenCraft, and is based in the UK. MasterClass seems to be getting pushed everywhere, and world wide, which is nice from an "I want one of those" point of view. At the same time the KitchenCraft gear is slowly disappearing.

Therefore who ever is stocking the tent's supplies has easy access to the MasterClass equipment. At the same time, with the sheer volume of MasterClass items now in the tent I'm starting to believe they may have been supplied to The Great British Bake Off or paid for product placement. Especially because the first thing on the Mandoline's webpage is "As Seen on TV!."

I'm not sure how much I like this, as it feels like in previous seasons the gear in the tent was just the top of class product (or near enough at least), and had a really nice aesthetic that jived well in the tent.

Well if you're in the UK again you're in luck! And statistically going to live longer than a lot of people. Something about free healthcare. I digress.

You can pick the MasterClass Stainless Steel Mandoline (Amazon - UK) up from both the Cook Serve Enjoy web page as well as Amazon. If you're in the US you're going to pay a shipping premium to the tune of roughly $50. With the quantity of MasterClass items at Walmart now, I'm surprised they do not carry it.

Which brings us to some options and a pause. First of all, do you need a mandoline? How much are you slicing things? I've made potato au gratin by just slicing my potatoes, it does not take too much time. Especially when calculating in setup and cleaning time of a mandoline. So if you're slicing like 30 potatoes, sure it may be worth while. If you're slicing like 3... not so much.

Additionally a lot of people have complained in reviews about the setup time of the MasterClass mandoline. They also complain about the looseness of the construction which gives the blade some play. But those seem like infrequent issues.

Across the board no one seems to make the perfect mandoline. The best ones seem to clock in around 4.3 stars, which always gives me pause. To that end if you're not looking to pay a massive import premium for the MasterClass mandoline, CuisineArt makes a very similar mandoline which you can also find at Walmart. Fullstar makes one as well that is really well reviewed, though I have no idea who they are. With any of these options I'm again going to push some protective cut resistant gloves. Moving your hand back and forth quickly, holding potentially slippery things, in close proximity to a blade is just ... a recipe of disaster.

If you're looking for a safer alternative there are some vertical mandolines that operate by moving the blade via a handle while applying pressure to the food via a plunger. This keeps your fingers away from the blades, but they look like a nightmare to clean.

So again - if you're slicing things in bulk and its going to take forever with a knife, get a mandoline. If you're just cutting a few things - a sharp knife is going to do you just fine and require way less clean up.